A TV ad with a Chihuahua named Q00-chan caused a surge in small dog popularty in Japan after 2002: However, according to The Economist, with toy poodles #1 and chihuahuas #2, the bigger reason tiny dogs are popular in Japan…
As an emerging markets investor in 19th century South America, it was tough to find out what was really happening. At best, up-to-date news had a three month journey. Even with good winds, the round trip between London and South…
With UN climate talks starting, one issue that will be tough to manage is the unavoidable growing demand for meat in emerging market nations like China.
In refrigerators in developing nations, we can see the impact of affluence on their diet and on supply and demand that will change worldwide food prices.
On a ladder of spending in developing economies, growing affluence first means wheat and meat. Then, climbing somewhat higher, people can afford consumer durables like a washing machine and a car. On a Chinese spending ladder, we could add golf. But it is a…
As most of us know, cow burps add to global warming. So too do the methane releases of sheep, goats and other ruminant animals. In a recent opinion piece in Nature Climate Change, a group of researchers suggest we should…
Milk prices are going up. And yet, in the US, we are drinking less milk. According to Corey Geiger, managing editor of Hoard’s Dairyman magazine, one reason is oil. Countries in the Middle East with massive oil reserves have to import 90%…
In an econlife post from September 2013, we presented a spending ladder that emerging market nations like the BRICs–Brazil, Russia, India, China–might climb. At each rung, spending surges and then flattens at that higher level until consumers can afford to climb…
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